me. The tilt of a nose, the lift of a chin, the exact way she smiled, teeth gleaming; the exact way she frowned, with that little furrow between her eyes. Every wrinkle, groove, line, shadow, hollow, blemish, hurt.
I never met them, yet I miss them. I never knew them then, yet I know them now, when it’s too late. I know them in a way no one else ever could. They would have known me too. We might not have liked each other, but we are sisters under the skin, for their fear was my fear, their shame was my shame, their rage was mine, and their panic, and their violation, and their sense that there was nothing they could do, and their knowledge that the horror was coming nearer and nearer. I know what they felt. I felt it too.
Others will gradually forget them, or at least they will let them go. That’s how it should be when someone dies. The people who told them they loved them will say the same words to someone else. That’s fine, that’s right; that’s the only way we can cope with life. We’d go mad if we remembered everything-and hung on to it. So they’ll slide away. All their flaws and their irritating habits and their particular ways will fade, and they’ll become vague, less vivid and less human. Too good to be true: blank, shiny surfaces where other people can stare at their own reflections. Their graves will be visited more and more infrequently; soon only on anniversaries and days of special importance. People will tell stories about how they once knew them, for proximity to tragedy makes us feel somehow important. They will use a reverent and hushed voice to talk of them: Oh yes, wasn’t it terrible, what happened to Zoe, to Jenny? Wasn’t it sad?
But I can’t forget them like that. I have to carry them with me wherever I go now; through the life I have got back again, through the years they didn’t have, all the love and loss and change they never knew. Every day I say to them again: Good-bye.
About Nicci French
Under the pseudonym of Nicci French, hides a couple of London journalists, Nicci Gerrard and Sean French, who conceive and write together psychological thrillers.
